Ongoing International Projects

The goal of the DiCoMa project is to ensure effective management of large disasters and complex emergencies by providing a set of tools that aim to improve the effectiveness of decision makers in dealing with disasters by better training and in situ support in the field. This toolset will include:

Data Abstraction tools - A Comprehensive set of tools designed to process and correlate information from a large variety of public and private sources, allowing the creation of a unified data set, which can be easily explored and understood by decision makers.

Simulation and Modelling Tools: - DiCoMa proposes to create a suite of simulation tools that model both human behaviour and natural phenomena (i.e. fires, earthquakes, weather patterns.). The models will be based upon extensive theoretical work and field experience.

Decision Support and Training tools - DiCoMa intends to create applications to be used by decision makers during both real and simulated disasters, that presents information to the decision maker in a manner that is easily and quickly understood, proposes alternative actions, indicating the implication of each alternative Using simulation modelling, and disseminates decisions to all personnel, equipment, and agencies involved in the disaster response process.

In order to achieve these objectives, the DiCoMa consortium intends to follow three main principles:

1. People - The DiCoMa consortium believes that effective disaster management requires taking into account people, and the way they react to emergencies. This results in an intense usage of User Centered Design, involving many application partners (as potential users), as well as studying behavior patterns in emergencies and taking these patterns into account, in the design and implementation of DiCoMa.

2. Interoperability - DiCoMa intends to focus on the ability of agencies to cooperate, sharing information and resources, regardless of internal procedures and regardless of language. Furthermore DiCoMa will aim at defining a standardized Process Framework, which will allow the different parties in a disaster scenario to work collaboratively together, but still comply with their own country specific set of processes, rule and regulation.

3. Validation - The DiCoMa consortium intends to prove the feasibility of the developed concepts und prototypes by executing a validation phase, allowing actual users to work with the system, managing simulated multi-national disaster scenarios.

The DiCoMa consortium includes 16 partners from 4 different countries - sharing their expertise and experiences. The Consortium is purposely large: This was done Intentionally, as the project is intended as a â€œReference Model', incorporating many up-and-coming technologies in the field of crisis management.The Dicoma project has partners from 4 countries: Spain, Finland, Israel and Turkey.